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Abstract.- This study aimed to investigate septic complications resulted in behavioral changes in mice offspring. Pregnant Swiss female mice were intraperitonealy injected with the acute bacterial lipopolysaccharides (LPS) at a single dose of 2.5 mg/kg of body weight at the 7th day of gestation. LPS increased the oxidative stress and decreased the anti-oxidant glutathione in the tissue of the LPS-treated mothers and pups. This might mediate the behavioral complications responses to the LPS in the pups born to LPS-treated mothers. The experiments indicated that LPS significantly reduced the locomotors activity of mice pups when compared with the saline-control mice. LPS was found to inhibit the sensory motor reflexes in all elements of acts and postures. Significant decreases were observed in the social contacts, threat, attack and number of fights of pups born to LPS-treated mothers.
Highly distributed focal areas indicating many phagocytic activities with a marked depletion of lymphocytes was observed in section from thymus of pups born to LPS-treated mice, indicating an intense inflammation. In conclusion, prenatal LPS-induced inflammation enhanced the susceptibility to the development of neonatal systemic and behavioral disorders.
Key Words: Lipopolysaccharide, prenatal exposure of LPS, mice offspring, glutathione, sensory motor reflexes, endotoxin.
INTRODUCTION Lipopolysaccharides (LPS) are found in the outer membrane of various Gram-negative bacteria and are important component of their ability to cause diseases. Lipid A of the LPS affected mitochondrial respiration and phosphorylation (Kato, 1972). LPS is believed to be the primary trigger of Gram-negative septic shock (endotoxemia), and has been widely used in investigations of bacterial infection-induced inflammatory response (Saluk-Juszczak and Wachowicz, 2005).
During fetal development, signals from the environment program the neuro-endocrine system and behavior of offspring. Investigations have shown that prenatal stress, maternal inflammation or infection, and fetal malnutrition alter physiology and behavior in later life. Response to an inflammatory stimulus such as LPS depends on the integrative activation of the HPA-axis and the immune system (Tilders et al., 1994) In humans, LPS binds to the LPS-binding protein (LBP) in the serum, which transfers it to CD14 on the cell membrane, which in turn transfers it to another non-anchored protein which associates with toll like receptor-4 (TLR4) (Nguyen et al., 2002; Blander and Medzhitov, 2004; Doyle et al., 2004). CD14 and TLR4 are present in several...